I was looking for some interesting programs a while ago, and this popped up on my radar. I came across it when I was looking for ambient music for my games last year, but right now the creator of the software promises an upcoming release of a new version with loads of new features.
Very well…
Syrinscape is a soundscape program that allows the creation of dynamic soundscapes for RPG games. There are a few of that kind around, but Syrinscape is both free and more or less easy to configure. A soundscape in Syrinscape can be created by dropping the sound effects and music one wants to have in it into a folder and renaming them slightly so they are associated with certain channels in the program. Seems a bit daunting at first, but is not really much work. I decided to create a Tavern soundset yesterday and behold, it’s nearly finished today. So, not really hard to use.
The website offers a few different soundscapes that should give a good point to start from, even though some of them are a bit weird (Battle for example has mostly animal noises, and Bells has… bells). One of the nicer things about it is that ambient music for the game can be added by simply copying it into the soundscape folder and renaming it. In that way one could actually create nice variant soundscapes by simply replacing the playlist for different locales (e.g. music 1 for the catacombs and music 2 for the orc warrens, while both of them have otherwise the same soundset otherwise in it).
One feature that does not seem to see too much use yet are one-off sound effects, or rather: current soundsets barely have one-off effects in them. The only one that actually has nice ones is the Dungeon set that has interesting things like an alarm bell, fireballs, dragon roars, etc. I think it would be nice to have a certain one-off soundset at hand in a few places though, just to make my players jump when they hear it. The howl of wolves in the wilderness, the cackling of a witch in the distance, the sound of footsteps coming from somewhere behind them. Hmm…
Somehow I forgot all about the old Dodecahedron’zine when I compiled my list of ongoing projects. And to be honest, I’d pretty much dropped the idea of going back to publishing my 12-page zine in favor of putting work into the blog and publishing the finished works in a commercial format. But then I started working on these monster character classes (I’ll po […]
Over on icv2.com, they have put together a top ten list for Kickstarter projects of a tabletop gaming nature. See more here! In a related article, Matt Forbeck provides some analysis for the success of the top funders here! Furthermore, check out the detailed comparison of "IndieGoGo.com versus Kickstarter.com" by James Mathe here!
Combined Spellcasting. This article was made due to a request of a Mage Blade player. The question was : "How can a spell have multiple spell casters and what is the benefit?" Well actually the answer is quite simple! Each caster must design the spell, that requires multiple casters. It can be a spell where all casters have the same role, or it […]
DM Notes: This episode is the full recording of our Tomb of Horrors Actual Play. To get an idea of what you are in for, check out our Tomb of Horrors Actual Play trailer. Rather than write extensive show notes, I will follow up with a companion episode next week. If you have specific questions about this episode and you want them answered on the companion sh […]
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"Maybe the best D&D music ever comes from Basil Poledouris's soundtrack for Conan the Barbarian. Every player of a fighter or barbarian wants to be Arnold. If you play this, they will be. Of course, if you play it, don't expect them to find diplomatic solutions to problems."--Mike Selinker, "The Definitive D&D Soundtrack, […]
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